Reply With QuoteThe imp in me would like to think that global warming is just a giant mistake by scientists. I do still remain to be fully convinced.
The imp in me would like to think that global warming is just a giant mistake by scientists. I do still remain to be fully convinced.
The fool in me too.
I'm not as think as you drunk I am.
I'm not sure if this so called climate change is real, imagined or a direct result of our actions. There does not seem to be any proof one way or another, but what does annoy me is politicians using it to milk the general population under a pretense of 'green taxes' & that the majority of the guilt is also aimed at the same people ..
/vince ..
My personal issue with global warming is that the earth goes through cycles of hot and cold. How do they separate those altogether natural events from that which they say is man made i.e. Global Warming? The last great cycle was before real records were kept.
I downloaded that 61 MB of zipped emails and documents, actually, and have started browsing through them. What little I have been able to read does indeed suggest that a) research projects are being set up to get grants, and to reach that goal, they need to be set up beforehand to support the notion of human-induced global warming; b) some very unscientific feelings regarding known sceptics are ventilated; c) some deliberate manipulation of models and datasets to support the consensus and convince policy makers may be going on. Also, a lot of personal energy seems to be spent on 'getting grants' and this seems to be more important than the actual scientific work the grants are supposed to be financing.
This ls of course all very human. A large cake is being served and many people are trying to get a chunk of it. Like all animals, hyumans are trying to increase their personal energy intake, which today means obtaining money - which is nothing else but a symbol for a certian quantity of mostly fossil energy. So these climate scientists are themselves deeply engaged in the rat race which is causing the planet's resources to run out faster every day - whether oil, coal, rare minerals, fertile soil or clean water.
Cheap, abundant energy is becoming scarcer, large tracts of nature are being destroyed and billions are going hungry; all of which are excellent reasons to adopt most of the measures (though not all, such as large-scale biofuels or splattering windmills all over the country even where there is no wind) being suggested by officials. Ad then some.
And yes, temperatures seem to be rising when one looks at the graphs for all countries over the past century or so (these are in the hacked files). In most countries the present decade seems to be no warmer than the period around the early 1940s, which was a relatively warm decade followed by substantial temperature decline in the 1960s (enough for climatologists of that era to worry about a new ice age; go figure !).
Even if the global warming religion is right and the world will heat a lot during this century due to whatever combination of natural and human-induced factors, everything suggests there is nothing that can be done now to stop it from happening. Money and effort would be better spent on mitigating the results of warming, not the warming itself. Homa sapiens can relocate himself, to think that we can 'control' the climate is hubris in the extreme.
Will Greenland become green (again - it was not called that for nothing by the Vikings)? Will the Bangladeshi have to flee their country when it gets washed away by the rising seas? So allow them to move to Greenland, where very few people are living now anyway... Baptise the place New Bangladesh.
Are our planetary resources running out? So go get them elsewhere in the solar system. Many asteroids are mostly pure steel (nickel and iron) with other metals added tot the mix, or loose aggregates of carbon compounds and water ice. Mine them, hollow them out, make them spin and your mine, once depleted, becomes a huge space habitat complete with artificial gravity. In space the sun never sets so PV panels really work there, and concentrated sunlight to melt metals is totally free.
Be creative. Or accept that we we all need to return to far less energy-intensive world with few or no cars, far fewer gadgets, far less unneccessary consumption of luxury goods (expensive watch collections come to mind ... :wink: ), and so fourth. Meaning that the politico's should cut back 80 percent on their air travel to sumptuous conferences, dump their limousines and copious dinners.
I don't really think they will. Do you?
A minor point:
Wiki:Will Greenland become green (again - it was not called that for nothing by the Vikings)?
Interpretation of ice core data suggests that between 800 and 1300 AD the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a mild climate, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years — which makes it possible to say that areas of Greenland may have been much warmer during the medieval period than they are now and that the ice sheet contracted significantly.[8]
There's always been a massive lobby against the manmade-global-warming camp. My guess is that the forces of inertia will prove more powerful than the forces of change, regardless of the arguments deployed.
Time will tell... might be too late by then of course, but I don't see global carbon emission patterns changing greatly.
It would be interesting to hear whether Kiwis/Aussies have a different view... they've had direct experience of man-made impact on the atmosphere in the form of a depleted ozone layer/higher UV levels. Not the same thing exactly, but I wonder if that brings a different perspective.
It may be a good idea to Google for the 'Copenhagen Diagnosis', a report on climate change published by a group of pretty serious climate researchers with the clear objective to bring politicos up to speed with the most recent research that had not been incorporated in the last IPCC report (the next IPCC round will be in 2013 or something). Seems fairly authoratitive.
reading through some more of the hacked e-mails it seems that most climate researchers are not involved in some secret plot to take over the world or help politicians do so, and they are putting a lot of effort in trying to hone their models and datasets to reflect reality, which is a rather daunting task. They are also faced with the need to simplify things for policymakers (most politicians not schooled in the 'hard' sciences at all; just try to explain the gas law or absorption of radiation spectra to a lawyer...). Thus they communicate a lot on how to present graphs so as to hammer down the message best, include data sets that are still not too clear, and so fourth.
What is also clear from those mails is that there is a whole community of climate modelers who 'have fun' devising new or modified models, playing with them, adapting them, and discussing their merits during frequent gatherings in pleasant, exotic locations with good hotels, good food, a pleasant climate (!) and (though that is never mentioned of course) probably good opportunities to hump members of the opposite sex. Which in itself is nothing different from what politicians do... all paid for by our tax euros/pounds/dollars etc. ; and there is a lot of haggling and battling for research grants, positions and funding; one gets the impression that in some cases it is more important to be able to write a convincing grant proposal than to do good actual science. Which apparently is how science works these days, unfortunately. So yes, even the most serious and sincere scientists have their personal agendas, if only to hold on to their decently salaried positions (or step up their careers) in prestigious institutions so they can feed their families. Which is understandable.
Global warming is not a subject one can really 'lobby' for. It happens, or not. Nature may make it happen, or the combined destructive force of 6.7 billion humans, or both. If the Copenhagen Diagnosis is anywhere near being right a lot of people will be getting their feet wet this century, while others will see their fertile lands dry out and become dust bowls. Add to that the declining non-renewable resources like oil, coal and all sorts of minerals that are either burnt up or go into our mobile phones and other gadgets, and we are certainly looking at a picture that is not very pretty. Letting fossil fuel consumption peak in the next five years and then assure a sharp decline, to 85-90 % less use by 2100 is very probably a totally impossible goal unless we all turn out the lights and get out of our cars *right now*. Even in the mature economies of the west where huge windpower parks have been built, fossil fuel consumption has risen as total consumption has gone up faster than the production of renewable energy.
I think the Shit will Hit The Fan big time in the next few decades. If you live in a low-lying coastal area or a flood-prone river valley in a temperate climate, or a place that is already too dry, I say: get out of there while you can and head for green hills... with few or no security cameras. :roll: :shock:
I find it very significant that the concpet of climate change is such a very emotive subject.
I think this is because it challenges the way people do things and are used to doing things in a very fundamental way.
I cant say to what extent climate change is a product of mans activity or not, but what I can say is that we on the planet are facing very real challenges concerning the dwindling availability of finite resources v. a massive increase in global populations on the other.
When I was a kid, water was free. When people started charging to buy mineral water on a widespread level I thought it was ridiculous and would never catch on. Now I buy it regularly myself. I have even heard now of cities where they charge for fresh air. You can pay to get fresh air delivered in cylinders. Where will it end?
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Soylent Green. :shock: :roll:Originally Posted by seikopath
You cant go wrong with a bit of ketchup!Soylent Green. :shock: :roll:
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I believe and always have done that the warming and cooling of planet is a cycle, there is data to suggest that it was globally warmer in roman times than it is today. However, i also believe that we (man) is accelrating the cycle and increasing global temps through the constant amount of Co2 we are pumping in to the sky.
The affects of this 'acceleration' i do believe will have a profound affect on the way the world will be shapped going forward, rising sea levels etc etc. Aside of that though i also believe that the increase in disease, asthma, cancers etc are all a direct cause of what we pump in to your life sources, air and water.
So regardless of whether the extent of global warming is a myth or not we still have to change the way in which we treat the enviroment becuse man is choking himself and everything around him to death. :(
+1
the clarkson argument against climate change is that the dinosaurs were'nt driving around in SUV'S.
to me that is irrelevant, in actual fact it makes the whole issue more poignant becuase it indicates that there are so many more factors out of our control than we realise or understand. all the more reason therefor to take control and responsibility for the actions we are aware of.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Climate Change
BRING IT ON I'M WELSH :lol:
God made it rain for 40 days and 40 nights, This is STILL the best summer in Wales on Record :lol:
I did not take my Kagool off until I was 13 :shock:
Mart
Interesting piece by Lord Lawson in The Times this week...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle6927598.ece
"I looked with pity not untinged with scorn upon these trivial-minded passers-by"
Nigel Lawson sure has plenty to say on climate science considering he has no scientific credentials whatsoever. But as a politician, he surely has plenty of credentials in bullshit.
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0...e.2008.60.html
What?! An article sniping at Nigel Lawson the Climate-Change Denier?! In Nature magazine?!? WOW !!!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:
Actually :roll:
The article is written by Sir John Houghton, in the pay of the Met office and doyenne of the John Ray Initiative. The JRI's motto is 'connecting Environment, Science and Christianity'. If you are available on the 5th December you can join him at the 'Wave' : billed as "Come together to pray and march to stop climate chaos".
If you want to stop climate chaos Sir John, you might want to rein in on the alarmist eco-bilge, and just stay at home. Nothing more likely to add to 'chaos' than a herd of climate fascists clogging up public transport in the capital on a Saturday.
I don't think Nigel Lawson is motivated by the quite same self-hating prod-nose pious cant as Houghton. But then, Im probably a climate heretic who thinks AGW is the very definition of bullshit.
Oh, and just to mention, The Wave starts at 11am at Central Hall. Wear blue (apparently) and bring your own tofu & sandals.
Cheers
David
This seems a credible look at gases and percentages to give a view as to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the amount of that which is man made:
From here: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Oh and another surprise. The CRU's source data has been 'lost' / dumped...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 936328.ece
... It wasn't just space they were saving, then. :roll:The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space
Yup cat out of the bag. Turkeys home to roost. Tide's out and the climate change pundits were swimming naked all along.
AGW must be the biggest mass fraud since the trade in holy relics and papal indulgences. To think that the politicos will be spending billions of our ££ on pointless zero-carbon vanity projects, screwing us with green taxes and raping the landscape with wind turbines - all on the conceit of a few latter-day snake oil salesmen masquerading as climatologists.
Not a rant ( :D ) - just a short reflection before galvanising into some positive action.
Regards
David
Well said. I fully agree.
The 'debate' over anthropogenic climate change is a red herring. It's utterly irrelevant (pseudo-religious hoax or not). The key thing is that climate change is an ongoing process (natural, manmade, or mostly natural and slightly manmande, it matters not) and the only thing that matters now is on adapting with it, as part of the natural progress of technical, scientific, economic and commercial progress. Taxes and state authoritarianism only harm this process of natrual adapatation and structural evolution.
Regardless of what is happening here on Earth, the solar system (and eventually beyond) is the furture of humankind.
It suited (and still suits) the politicians because its give them more power and it gives the system (which supports the status quo and the politicans) more money through 'green' taxes.
Well, I have been looking into those emails and reading up on comments from more knowledgeable people a bit more, and it seems things are quite a bit more serious than one would tend to expect. Scientists who delete vital raw data, manipulate temperature data to 'hide the decline', try their best to oust editors from scientific journals because they published articles by sceptics (which in their view also includes scientists who agree that the world seems to be warming and that some of that may be due to human activity, but who are just cautious about how much is human-induced), and conspiring to delete embarassing data when requests for those based on the Freedom of Information Act come in. Apart from that the computer model appears to be an absolute mess.
I just read that in the US, the Federal Trace Commission has issued new rules for the oil trading industry, as follows:
The rule, issued by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), prohibits any person, directly or indirectly, in connection with the purchase or sale of crude oil, gasoline, or petroleum distillates at wholesale, from:
Knowingly engaging in any act, practice, or course of business – including the making of any untrue statement of material fact – that operates, or would operate, as a fraud or deceit upon any person; or
Intentionally failing to state a material fact that under the circumstances renders a statement made by such person misleading, provided that such omission distorts or is likely to distort market conditions for any such product.
So, according to those rules, even not mentioning a fact that you have knowledge of during commercial transactions and that may 'distort market conditions' is considered illegal. The penalty is one million dollars per day!
If you project that on climate policy, I'd say that some people have intentionally 'failed to state material facts and distorted market conditions'. They have even knowingly engaged in fraud and deceit. Why are similar rules not used to force the IPCC and its scientists to maintain transparent about their methods and data?
I think I'm becoming an AGW skeptic. And I think we have been had.
Note that apparently the head of the Climate Research Unit, dr. Jones, has been suspended and other people involved in this mess will be 'investigated'. And note that the recently published Copenhagen Diagnosis which I mentioned earlier happens to be written by some of the same bunch of people who were involved in the CRU mess. I'd say that makes it far less credible.
But some powerful people stand to make a lot of money from either dealing in carbon credits or by building and running subsidized windmill parks...
The debate will be taken up by people much more intelligent than I, and the majority of the population.
However, from observing these debates, it does seem that the 'climate change' camp is full of zealots. Instead of debating facts/scientific data, many (I admit not all) attack and attempt to ridicule anyone in disagreement.
This is quite a good interview,
http://www.rte.ie/podcasts/2009/pc/p...thpatkenny.mp3
Whether man made (I seriously doubt that it is) or not, the cilmate is changing. The Copenhagen meeting is a load of bollocks, instead of trading carbon (Al Gore might make some more money, what a surprise :roll: ) etc, why not build up flood defenses, work on efficient fuels (including research on nuclear fuels), recycle efficiently (use cars for longer instead of producing more new ones???). Until the government is willing to take this seriously by implementing changes (not fining those who don't recycle, that is just a way of increasing revenue), I will not believe in ManBearPig/MMGW
Just to clarify, Phil Jones has temporarily stepped aside for the duration of the review; whether or not it'll be viable for him to return to his post will presumably depend on the outcome.Note that apparently the head of the Climate Research Unit, dr. Jones, has been suspended and other people involved in this mess will be 'investigated'.
As long as the CRU will only be investigating itself, he'll likely come back... :roll:
Very likely, the people in power will do anything they can to see that this is shrugged off or ignored by mainstream media, and that it does not get in the way of introducing new rules and (carbon)trade systems that will further enrich their friends (and themselves) while increasing control (one might even say oppression) of the general population. Pournelles Law of Bureaucracy working in perfect harmony with Greed.
It would not surprise me it the climatologists of 20 or so years ago had never imagined that they would have to emerge from their academic basements, and that some report or other would be seen by politicians and money peddlers as the perfect excuse to force a whole new socio-economic system on the rest of us. In their ignorance, they have handed the Powers the tools to build the brave new world of Brazil (the movie). On a platter.
Well, there are very strong vested interests on both sides of this, so I'd hope that there would be an adequately thorough and transparent enquiry. The climate change proponents have to realise that their collective credibility has been seriously damaged, and that any attempt to whitewash this won't cut the mustard. There needs to be a full and public explanation of the circumstances leading up to this and not just the ending of a few scapegoats' careers.
It is a shame that the whole Climategate saga has made the conspiracy theorists look plausible because the basic physics of GW mechanism is as solid as it gets and science is by it's very nature is a self-correcting discipline. You absolutely cannot fool nature, it will keep on doing what it does in spite of the hype and bullshit. Ignore it at your peril.
But alas science is not well understood by Joe Public and that is not likely to be corrected so long as there is a whiff of a conspiracy to throw the blame at. Even if there is a full investigation, and I'm sure there will be, people will still call it a whitewash because reality is so damned unpopular.
Is it really?
Just speaking of GW is a partisan attitude with no relation to the solid physics you claim it is based upon.
The World has got warmer since the last Ice Age. It will continue to warm up to a point and then will start cooling down, towards another ice age.
The debate is about man's influence. Is it real? undoubtedly. To which extend? Now this is an interesting question, and the answer isn't that clear cut...
Can we do something about it? and will it make a difference?
Well when scientist who haven't been subsidised by a "green" (lack of a better word) lobby will come out and answer yes to those last 2 questions I shall start listening.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I have a degree in Physics, went on to take a PhD in Physics and have spent the past 10 yrs doing industrial engineering R&D. A good few years back I did a superconductor project, turned out OK but it was the fad at the time and a lot of really poor stuff was published, often papers would only mention certain tests that made them look good. Trying to replicate what was done in some of these papers resulted in poor results against the tests they didn't publish. In short ppl don't tend to publish negative results or anything for that matter that makes them bad. When a fad is in though everyone just wants a piece of the action and unfortunately climate science seems to have fallen foul of the same sorts of shenanigans. None of the stuff that has come out recently has surprised me to be honest, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it means the entire thing is a big fraud.
Of the four major materials that contribute to "greenhouse warming" CO2 is the only one man influences in any major way. As you can see there are many more factors involved or the above historical data makes no sense. And, these unknown factor cannot be a result of industrial man.
Plausible? They were already plausible, given that the work and data was not made freely available for other scientists to examine.
What's changed is that CRU's 'findings' are now known to have extremely questionable scientific basis.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I tend to agree with NJH to a point, although I disagree that negative conclusions are usually suppressed. The one result a scientist truly dreads is 'inconclusive'.
The BBC's report on this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8393449.stm
I understand that science often denies commonly understood logic but it really doesn't take a genius to grasp that pumping the atmosphere full of noxious gases is not a good thing. But does it threaten us in the global way? Unless the scientists rather than the politicians tell us openly and in concert not disarray then the public will rightly continue to be cynical.
I wouldn't say negative conclusion, rather a positive conclusion that is only supported by the thin evidence supplied. As an example I replicated the recipes for a particular superconductor as published in several papers. We used to have a battery of tests for determining a particular superconductors performance. What I found is that I could replicate the tests in a particular paper, but if say they only published the results of 3 tests you could bet as sure as night follows day that the performance was pants on the other tests. That was as close as I got to a current research fad after that I went of the radar so to speak into confidential product research. TBH this did make me pretty cynical about academic research as it is basically driven by the need to get grant funding which in turn is driven by how much you can publish.
I haven't commented on the climate science / GW etc. as I believe it really is a bit of a red hearing. 6BN+ ppl and dwindling resources is bad enough itself, we could get to a carbon neutral economy and still end up totally screwed in 50 years time. Far too much focus on this one issue could result in a backlash that means we miss all the other challenges.
Well that Bob Ward is an arrogant so-and-so... I think I have a right to be cynical about his ability to engage in rational debate, when he classes opponents as 'mischief makers' spreading 'disinformation'. In retort, that's exactly what CRU look like! :lol:
I just meant that... well, say you'd found that none of the tests worked, that would also be a result worth publishing. Or should be, if it wasn't for the politics :evil:I wouldn't say negative conclusion, rather a positive conclusion that is only supported by the thin evidence supplied. As an example I replicated the recipes for a particular superconductor as published in several papers. We used to have a battery of tests for determining a particular superconductors performance. What I found is that I could replicate the tests in a particular paper, but if say they only published the results of 3 tests you could bet as sure as night follows day that the performance was pants on the other tests. That was as close as I got to a current research fad after that I went of the radar so to speak into confidential product research. TBH this did make me pretty cynical about academic research as it is basically driven by the need to get grant funding which in turn is driven by how much you can publish.
Have to agree about academic research - I've tried to use software algorithms from published papers that purport to be efficient, only to find that they are far from robust, even when fed with well structured input data... which makes them completely useless!!
Deforestation worries me the most, out of all the things we do to the planet. :(
..and of course if we actually increased the level of forestation the trees would absorb a lot of the C02. I think what gets ppl feeling very cynical is when they see petrol being taxed to death for green reasons only for the money raised to end up funding the dole queue etc. This is one area of the debate where I am with the climate critics as a lot of this stuff will be used like an excuse to tax ppl more and restrict development. I haven't heard the politicians making a big issue out of deforestation, population growth, loss of biodeversity, etc. etc. These issues do get talked about but I don't have much confidence that much is going to be done on these issues when the record player is stuck on global warming = ban cars etc.
That's because those issues involve real work and are very hard to resolve. They go as usual for the easy targets.
My irritation with the whole thing is that the sacrifices the eco-lobby want us to make individually are out of all proportion to the apparent damage we cause.
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